ZDNet Asia conducted an online survey between March 2011 and March 2012 to look into the pay packages Asia's IT professionals were receiving and related market trends.

The study polled a total of 945 respondents from various job functions varying from administrators and support to IT management and systems development, and across seven Asian economies: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

India contributed 508 participants to the survey. Of these, 176 of them had less than 5 years of working experience in the industry and 254 had between 5 and 10 years, while 78 had more than 10 years' worth of experience.

In terms of pay, those in IT management within the country's IT, Web and telecom sector head the top earners list with an average annual salary of just over 1 million rupees, trumping their counterparts in the legal and finance sector who earn 986,500 rupees a year.

In the following charts, INR denotes the Indian rupee.

Average annual salary by IT skills and years of experience (in INR)

IT skills

Years of Experience

Less than 5 years

5-10 years

More than 10 years

Application Development

431,616

881,376

1,364,788

Desktops/Software

318,395

640,154

949,618

System Administration

295,679

617,957

979,079

Servers/Networking

349,295

666,986

1,073,571

Web Development

447,126

-

-

Operating Systems

293,032

661,507

954,408

Database Management

386,741

685,909

1,214,667

Web Services

421,458

-

-

Infrastructure Management

334,958

781,422

1,209,714

IT Outsourcing

419,391

-

-

Consulting/Business Services

-

993,250

1,326,471

Web Development

-

798,637

1,271,278

Enterprise Applications

-

892,982

1,292,105

Average annual salary by job function and years of experience (in INR)

A Singapore-based freelance IT writer, Kevin made the move from custom publishing focusing on travel and lifestyle to the ever-changing, jargon-filled world of IT and biz tech reporting, and considered this somewhat a leap of faith. Since then, he has covered a myriad of beats including security, mobile communications, and cloud computing...
Full Bio